In exactly one week, I'll be in my new apartment.

I still have a lot of packing to do, and even with friends coming here to help me, the speed-up in packing seems negligible.

Oy.

Four days since my last post here. Since my birthday. Oy.

A large part of it is the fact that I've been devoting a lot of time to the Live Journal I started months ago.

Considering how I already post on three blogs, adding another one may seem crazy... but Live Journals have a level of community involvement that I find lacking in other blogs right now. You can use a separate utility like Blog This, but that costs extra. A shame.

Today marks my 35th birthday. To mark it, I use my favorite song from Xena:

For he's another year older,
Yes he's another year older.
Oh he's another year o-older...
- and that's a cryin' shame!

WIL WHEATON DOT NET

OK. I was one of the millions who despised him as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: the Next Generation. Still, he puts together a fascinating weblog.

Besides, how could I hate a member of Andre the Giant's posse?

Katherine Hepburn turns 95 this week. With her and Bob Hope in their mid- to late-nineties, that's pretty amazing.

How sad that Milton Berle isn't with us anymore too, to join them in a trio.

When I got home from my usual Friday get-together (man, the wind made it feel cold!) I had an answering machine message from my mom. She's back home for the weekend, but will be going back to my aunt in Vermont early next week.

My 35th birthday is this coming Tuesday - but it doesn't matter.

By the end of this month, I'll be moved to a new apartment. I'm still nowhere near done packing, I still don't know when we'll do the move - but that too doesn't matter.

What matters is that my uncle is in ICU there, with about 10% heart function, his best hope right now being a heart transplant -- and with the long wait on the waiting lists, that is a faint hope right now.

I've heard stories of miracles before, and I hope there's one here too...

Web Junkie -- canada.com

Mark is the sysop of a local science fiction-themed BBS I've been a member of for many years now. That guaranteed him a link.

I'm less than a month away from my move now... a few weeks, really.

I'm nervous about the fact that I still have a ton of stuff to pack, though.

With the sad news of my uncle's situation, and all the uncertainty from it, it really doesn't help.

I've been having trouble focussing this evening: one of my uncles, just shy of his 60th birthday, is in a hospital unconcious from two heart attacks. From what I've been told, we may be facing the worst.

In part, I'm feeling angry. For years now my aunt and others have been trying to get him to see a doctor about his wide girth, to make a healthier diet, but he stubbornly ignored all attempts to help him get healthier. He wouldn't see a doctor out of either fear or ignorance... and now that has led to what could be a sad loss for us at a far too early age.

I'm worried more for my aunt and cousins. I know my aunt has had heart troubles of her own, and high cholesterol - but she's been taking more care of herself. My cousins are in their early 20s too.

The Infinite Matrix | Bruce Sterling | Schism Matrix Current Day. A blog by author Bruce Stirling, ome of the fathers of cyberpunk.

April showers bring May flowers. So, what do showers in May bring, other than aggrivation?

It was raining most of today... and it was also cold enough that my breath was freezing in the air. Since I had a meeting to go to in the afternoon, and an eye doctor appointment early evening, I was stuck "enjoying" the lousy weather.

Stuff like this makes it less likely I'll miss this apartment. As a basement place, humidity always leaves it feeling chilly until mid-August. Then it becomes a sauna.

I'm less than a month away from my move, and I'm still trying to get my packing finished.

Today I finally stored away a part of my comic collection that hadn't been put in acid free boxes for years. I found issues of DC Comics classic Watchman series, as well as issues of Camelot 3000 (great series. Too bad it was over 2 years between the publication of issues 11 and 12). Also early issues of Miracle Man, a series currently in litigation on rights.

In over 20 years, I've really gathered some classic stuff.

I just changed the Website tracker for this Blog. While Site Tracker makes a larger graphic, at least I'll no longer see how the site was discovered by pervs looking for skin or for gruesome images (though these words are sure to get more of them).

Besides: Extreme Tracker still really belongs to the old site on Freeservers... it was time to get a new code.

So Robert Blake was finally arrested for the murder of wife Bonnie-Lee Begley... a year after the murder.

She sounded like a twisted woman - but that didn't in any way make it acceptable to kill her. The guilty party must pay.

I'm just amazed they waited so long to try for a conviction. Everything Blake has said in the last year pointed to a messed-up individual, one seemingly obsessed with guns.

Some are comparing this to the O J Simpson trial, for a celebrity being on trial. I'm hoping this one doesn't get away with the crime.

Independent News.

I'm not only a lover of Jazz. I'm also a writer, and lover of science fiction. Damon Knight had a major place in the field as an editor, a critic, a writer and member of the Futurians along with my idol Isaac Asimov and many others.

This eulegy speaks volumes about a great man.

It's official: David E. Kelly has announced that Ally McBeal will end with this season's final episode.

This really isn't too much of a surprise. I've been a fan of the show since the very beginning - but a few episodes into this season, I gave up on it. The magic just felt gone, the new characters and situations just not gripping.

A few things have happened in the world the past few days. I'll cover them in different posts; it'd be a tragic mistake to even compare them slightly in import.

Last night, US forces killed 4 Canadian troops, in a "friendly fire" incident: an American fighter pilot fired on Canadians performing a drill by accident.

This marked the second time in a week that such an accident happened. It's almost as if bored soldiers, not achieving high kill numbers, decided to take themselves out.

This was very, very sad.

CNN.com - Actor Robert Urich, dead at 55 - April 16, 2002. He was a television icon for my generation, and I'm a fan of detective fiction - so Dan Tanna and Spencer will always hold a place in my heart.

When he was first diagnosed with cancer, I'm sure that many of us rooted for him to beat it. He did for a time... but in the end, lost.

Goodbye Mr. Urich.

Time for some Web-geeking again: I'm testing out a 32-bit Windows utility to blog without logging into Blogger first.

The program is called Bloggar. I know; not an original derivation...

I can tell we've started to hype the Montreal Jazz Fest for this coming year: our local CTV station aired Jazz: A Century of Music today.

It was nice to see some of the legends of the business again, people not with us anymore, like Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and more... we were lucky to hear such greats in the 20th Century.